I've been a professional software developer for 3 years now, but I've been programming for about 6 years prior to that. Both as a hobby, but also as a side-effect of my education in mathematical modelling and decision making.
I love programming and developing applications, but due to my background in mathematics-economics I tend to have a very economical focus on the impact of what I do. To be frank, it is making me depressed.
It's not that I can't generate positive ROI for my time spent. The problem is how it affects society. My job (and education) seems primed to benefit shareholder at the cost of other stakeholders.
Automating people away seriously affects the livelyhood of those affected. To make it worse, cuts in costs often never make a difference to the price of end products, unless the market for those products are very competitive. Prices doesn't simply go down when costs go down. They go down when your main competitors prices go down.
It feel like I'm making everyone slightly worse off, except for my employer.
How can I make a living with my skills, serving the wider public? How can I make a positive difference in other peoples' lives?
I love programming and developing applications, but due to my background in mathematics-economics I tend to have a very economical focus on the impact of what I do. To be frank, it is making me depressed.
It's not that I can't generate positive ROI for my time spent. The problem is how it affects society. My job (and education) seems primed to benefit shareholder at the cost of other stakeholders.
Automating people away seriously affects the livelyhood of those affected. To make it worse, cuts in costs often never make a difference to the price of end products, unless the market for those products are very competitive. Prices doesn't simply go down when costs go down. They go down when your main competitors prices go down.
It feel like I'm making everyone slightly worse off, except for my employer.
How can I make a living with my skills, serving the wider public? How can I make a positive difference in other peoples' lives?